THE HASTY GENERALIZATION
I guess they’ve stopped teaching logic in law school. Either that or this young lawyer skipped class that semester:
I’ve read a lot in the recent days about how people want their kids to go to private schools. Also about home schooling. And about how our public education system is defunct. Why is that?
I have a public school education. And I’m a lawyer. I didn’t have trouble getting into or keeping up while in college. I didn’t have any trouble getting into law school. I got in to every one I applied to. Yet people seem to think the public schools aren’t teaching what they should.
It goes rapidly downhill from there:
And homeschooling does? Ok, yeah, if you home school you can decide how to teach your child. You can decide how well they know a subject and you are in complete control of their education. But are you an education major yourself? If not, I don’t really think you should be in charge of teaching a child. I teach sunday school…SUNDAY school…and I don’t have a teaching degree and some days I feel like I need one to adequately do my job. How can a parent be a better teacher than someone with the degree to teach? AND let’s not forget that while home schooled kids miss out on quite possibly the most important aspect of school. Socializing. Kids don’t learn how to be friends. They don’t learn how to share or how to act (or not act). Even if a home schooled child has 8 brothers and sisters, they aren’t socialized properly because the only way to be a friend is to MAKE friends. Family does not count. The only way to learn how to interact in the real world is to have the opportunities while growing up TO interact.
She then goes on to dis private schools. Apparently, the only way to get a decent education is to send your kids to prison enroll your kids in the g-schools. One good thing (the only good thing) I can say about her post is that she has a comments section.
6 Responses to “THE HASTY GENERALIZATION”
 Comment by COD December 20th, 2005 at 5:07 pm |
She has real winners in her comments already. I’m not even going to bother. |
 Comment by Andrea December 20th, 2005 at 7:05 pm |
It would take too long to even figure out where to start. :-/ |
 Comment by Brian Sassaman December 20th, 2005 at 10:40 pm |
There may be some problems with her comments section, so I’ll copy what I posted to her here: As a homeschooling parent, I can offer some insight and responses to your concerns about homeschooling. You are absolutely right that parents can decide how and what to teach their children. That is often at the top of the list of reasons why people make the choice to homeschool. As for an education major being a requirement to teach kids, it is simply not true. In many regards, it is a detriment. There are thousands upon thousands of fine teachers out there with education degrees, but it has nothing to do with their degree. It has to do with their love of teaching kids how to learn. Unfortunately, there are some with education degrees who really do not know how to teach kids how to learn and be successful in life. Even at top rated public schools. Parents who homeschool are involved with their children’s education by default. It is hard work, and it involves many sacrifices by the parents. They invest much to ensure that their kids will be well educated. There is plenty of evidence that homeschooled kids are better educated, so the quality of education argument really has been debunked. As for socialization, I’ll admit that before I researched homeschooling and met homeschoolers, I held the same opinion as you. It turns out that homeschooled kids are more comfortable around strangers and people who are not their own age. They certainly have friends, understand their responsibility to the community, and interact with the REAL world all day, every day. Homeschooled children have better socialization skills. Unless one defines socialization as Aldous Huxley describes “conditioning” in his book “Brave New World”: “And that,” put in the Director sententiously, “that is the secret of happiness and virtue— liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” Homeschooling can get your kids closer to freedom and liberty than anything. And that is good. I have intentionally not linked to any resources, but if interested, check out Google and Yahoo, there are lots of good resources that will explain homeschooling better than I can. |
 Comment by don December 21st, 2005 at 8:35 am |
Sigh. I just get so tired of hearing this same stuff over and over from people who obviously have no real exposure to homeschooling. |
 Comment by Rikki December 21st, 2005 at 10:00 am |
and, and, AND!!! |
 Comment by Katie December 23rd, 2005 at 11:21 am |
I think she is full of crap. I think her examples are fiction and I would bet money that she doesn’t have a law degree. Legal aid at best and I think that I am being generous. Once in college I knew a young girl who went to public school. She wanted to be a lawyer but she wasn’t smart enough so she pretended to be one on a blog. |